The Trump administration has a grand vision to rebuild Penn Station. Now, the feds need to figure out how to pay for the massive project.
Officials at Amtrak, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the private group leading the redesign met on Monday to go over the details of their plan, which were first reported by Gothamist last month.
The overhaul aims to convert the station into a single-level concourse, add a new light-filled entrance on Eighth Avenue and install a presidential seal that features President Donald Trump’s name.
Trump has ordered work to start on the rebuild by the end of 2027, and officials estimated the project will cost between $7 billion and $8 billion. Amtrak officials said they hope the federal government will cover a majority of the cost, but did not clarify how much of their planned funding would be subject to approval by Congress.
They said they were working on a “pre-development agreement” that will allow for the parties to source the money to build the station and to begin a federal environmental review process.
“My strategy, absolutely, is to maximize the federal contribution such that the gap to be filled is as small as possible,” said Andy Byford, Amtrak’s special advisor to the Penn Station effort, at a technical briefing with the press on Monday.
The Trump administration picked the design after considering another proposal that would have relocated Madison Square Garden to make way for a more ambitious rebuild of the station, which has sat beneath the arena since the 1960s. Amtrak released the new details of the plan hours before Trump was slated to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals at the invitation of Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan.
Byford and his team will be tasked with applying for federal grants, taking out loans with the “Build America Bureau” and lobbying officials in New York and New Jersey to chip in as well.
The reconstruction of Penn Station would add a new truck loading area for Madison Square Garden.
The Trump administration last year took control of the Penn Station project from the MTA, and turned over the work to Amtrak, which owns the train hall. Since then, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she would pull the $1 billion New York state had previously allocated for the project.
Byford said he met with Hochul recently to push her to reconsider her decision to pull local funding for the station.
“ I want[ed] to show her the model so that she can really see this is what you'd be getting and hopefully maybe she would want to change her position on funding,” Byford added. Byford said city taxpayers could also kick in for the project in exchange for improvements to public space around Penn Station.
Byford also said revenue from new skyscrapers proposed in the area could help cover the costs. Hochul floated a similar proposal in 2022 before real estate developer Vornado scuttled its building plans.
Vishaan Chakrabarti, the lead architect behind Penn Station's redesign, said the plan would create a Penn Station with twice as much floor space as Grand Central Terminal.
He also said the design would reopen the “Gimbles” passageway that connects Penn Station to Herald Square, which was closed in the 1990s.
The redesign will also create a new internal loading dock system for the 18-wheeler trucks that enter the Garden for events so that they are no longer idling on city sidewalks outside the arena.
